Category: Katie Mottram

World Suicide Prevention Day: From Breakdown to Breakthrough

10/9/2015

If you’re looking for a more holistic take on depression, you’ve come to the right place. Transpersonal psychology talks more in terms of a dark night of the soul. It is one of the most perilous forms psychospiritual crisis can take because it carries the risk of suicide. Tragically, anyone going through spiritual emergence(y) can end up taking their own life if the spiritual aspect of their breakdown isn’t recognised, valued and supported. When someone is so vulnerable, pathologising their experience as nothing but illness can push them even deeper into despair. It can literally prove fatal.

This is why so many of us are working to raise awareness and understanding of the highly complex relationship between mental health and spirituality. It is why charities around the world like the UK Spiritual Crisis Network (SCN) and the Canadian Spiritual Emergence Service (SES) exist – to offer support to those who need it.

Our message is simple: please reach out for support; you are not alone; many others have been through these crises and come out the other side. Psychospiritual crisis can be an excruciating process to go through – I know, I’ve been through it. But with the right support it can lead to considerable healing and growth.

There are lots of free resources on the UK SCN website, the Canadian SES, the Australian and American Spiritual Emergence Networks and on my website here. There are also online communities like the Shades of Awakening FB page and Kimberley Jones’ community and some excellent books by authors such as Christina and Stanislav Grof, Emma Bragdon, consultant psychiatrist Dr Russell Razzaque (Breaking Down is Waking Up) and myself (In Case of Spiritual Emergency: Moving Successfully Through Your Awakening). Memoirs of those who’ve come through it include Katie Mottram’s Mend the Gap. Upcoming there is also a powerful documentary film, CrazyWise and a novel by Emma Goude, My Beautiful Psychosis.

Such intense transformational crises are far more common than people realise. When understood, validated and supported they offer us the potential to move beyond our wounding, beyond our limited conception of ourselves.

Please help those in crisis find the support they need; please share this post. Together we can make a difference! Thank you.

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Return from the Wilderness

15/6/2015

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Hope Hospital, Mundesley, Norfolk

I’m just back from the wilds of Mundesley, with its beautiful unspoilt Norfolk coast. You’re going to be hearing a lot about Mundesley. The aptly named new Hope Hospital there has quite literally been born out of one person’s experience of spiritual emergency. The aim is to help people move through crises with the kind of support the founder would have liked for himself. And there are other developments linked to the hospital too, which are still being birthed.

I’m also back from the wilderness in the sense that my trip has resulted in a massive inner shift for me. I was speaking at a landmark conference, the first ever to be held at the new Hope Hospital and, as Mark Wentworth, the director, said when he welcomed us all: 'How fitting that the Spiritual Crisis Network conference should be the first.'

Although I’ve been working on a new book I’ve had a sense of feeling a bit lost and confused as to my direction, something of an inner struggle going on, not to mention how that has impacted on my physical energy levels.

Now, after the conference, that feels more like treading water, that I was waiting for something to happen and that something was the conference. It was a powerful coming together of people from all over the world; the USA, Canada, Switzerland, Bosnia, Poland, Hungary and, of course, the UK. The director of the newly formed Grof Foundation, Kenneth Sloan was there, as was Ted Esser, the director of the re-birthed American Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN) – re-birthed in that the new Grof Foundation has taken it under its wing and is now actively supporting it. And that was just the audience! You can see the line up of speakers here.

I confess I was slightly dreading speaking simply because I was last on, at the end of a very packed and tight day’s schedule. Somehow I had to keep my energy levels up and look after myself well enough all day long to give a potentially flagging and tired audience my best. The reality, though, was that everyone was so inspired by the whole day that it couldn’t have been easier. My personal triumph was that I did a really good job of looking after myself, going off to lie on the grass in the sun whenever I needed a break.

It’s too soon to say how the impact of the day will unfold for us all, the other speakers, the participants, the conference organiser, the wonderful Katie Mottram, and the hospital team. All I know at this stage is that it will be huge. For us all. And when I land, you’ll be hearing more from me...

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World Suicide Prevention Day: From Breakdown to Breakthrough

Return from the Wilderness

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